Stephen Benko, in Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, took a unique, intriguing approach to writing the history of Christendom’s first three centuries. He asked the questions: how would the Roman culture have viewed this new faith within their own context. I admired his commitment to approaching the question that way.

Unfortunately, his execution was quite poor. Benko notes the common, well-documented views of early Christians: they were a secret sect, they had strange ceremonies, they were cannibals, they practiced sexual immorality in secret meetings. Benko explains, chapter-by-chapter, where a view like that would have come from in the society and time of the early church. So far, so good. But the author failed to measure those views against the evidence to ask if they were reasonable views, even within the context of the first century. He also failed to measure his selected evidence against the broad, and widely documented, counter evidence of a people who were reasonable, peaceful, loving, committed to each other and to their God—committed enough, in fact it undergo gruesome persecution and death.

Most illustrative of his poor methodology was a chapter entitled, “A Portrait of an Early Christian,” where Benko sketches the life of one Perigrineus Proteus who lived from 110-165. Proteus, suspected of killing his father for his inheritance, traveled to Palestine, found Christians, joined the church and became prominent within the early church there and eventually was imprisoned for his faith. In prison, his brother believers cared for his needs to an extent that some criticized him for enriching himself with their aid. Eventually, he was released and traveled around the churches, receiving aid because of his history of enduring persecution. “Something” turned the church against him and he was excommunicated from the body of early Christians, later becoming a cynic. Protheus later foretold his own death at the Olympic Games in 165. A year’s worth of speculation and gossip about his prophecy brought a large crowd to the games, and, not disappointing them, Protheus jumped into the flames and perished as he had foretold.

A reader would be justified, finishing the chapter, to wonder, “Why would the author spend so much time on this strange personality in a book about the early church?” The author himself admits, at the end of the chapter, “it would be far fetched to call Perigrineus a CHRISTIAN monastic.” (Emphasis the author’s.) Just so.

Some interesting details of early church history here, but not much else to recommend the book. ( )